


Lance & Keef & Keith

by placidings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kindergarten & Pre-school, Bullying, M/M, Racism, This was therapeutic, Yes theyre children, first fic for this fandom yo, just slight, twitter prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-07 21:51:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14680200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placidings/pseuds/placidings
Summary: 4-year-old Lance is the outcast of Mr. Coran's kindergarten class, and sometimes it sucks-and so, to alleviate the loneliness, he lugs Keef to school. A stuffed red cat, his only friend.That is, until a kid with the same name as Keef arrives.





	Lance & Keef & Keith

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this fic is the product of one of my tweets, to which the dear [aki](https://twitter.com/chantedeer) responded with:  
>  _how bout,, preschool klance (but if ur uncomfy with romantic klance then how abt a friendship fic perhaps?) where lance is scared all the time because of bullies and carries a stuffed red cat and called it keith to make him feel safe_  
>  and here we are! hi aki, this one's for you!! <3

Lance is... _Different_. 

He's 4, about to turn 5 in a couple of months, yet he knows this—he knows he's different because his skin isn't the same color as his classmates'; because his tongue fumbles around the words of the English language; because he shouldn't be here, he _should just go back to wherever he came from_. The terrifying, big kids at school always tell him that, as if America was a better place than Cuba (it isn't), as if coming from somewhere other than America was a bad thing, as if Lance wouldn't go back if he had the chance. No one in Cuba ever antagonized him for something he couldn't change.

He's different. And somehow, he has come to understand that being different means either getting picked on by the big kids at playtime or sitting alone at his table during recess. No, not completely alone—he has Keef. Keef is small enough to be concealed in his backpack so the bullies won't get him, yet big enough to give him at least the slightest semblance of company whenever he feels alone and sad because the other kids don't want to be friends with him. Keef—his mother says his name different, she thinks it might be Keith, but why would he want a name too hard for him to say?—is a stuffed red cat from their old home in Cuba, a toy he has had since he was a baby, a safety blanket of some sort. Lance takes Keef to school every day, and knowing that he's just a couple of steps away in the cubbyhole makes him feel safer, braver, more invincible. Keef protected him as a baby; he knows he would protect him now.

Keef is more than just a toy. Keef is a friend.

Lance gives Keef one last squeeze before he returns to his solitary chair at the back of the class (the back is quiet and lonely, but it's okay because that way the other kids won't be able to put spitballs in his hair). In front, Mr. Coran stands with another little kid, someone he has never seen before: he was pale (but not the kind of pale his classmates were, he was a pretty, pearly kind of pale) with a dark mess of hair on his head—Lance thinks it looks weird, like he hacked at it himself—and bangs covering most of his forehead; he wore a red jacket with a single yellow stripe across the chest and tiny black boots, and from what Lance can see, he didn't look too happy to be in the class. The new kid isn't smiling; his eyebrows were pulled together in a frown as he looked at each and every one of them.

He doesn't look very friendly, but Lance thinks he looks interesting.

He looks _different_.

\---

The new kid's name is Keith, too.

Lance was _ecstatic_. He had the same name as his most favorite thing in the world, he was just as different as he is, he was a potential new friend, he was assigned to sit next to him because that was the only vacant seat in the classroom, and he scared the other kids. Except for him. The moment Keith—the kid Keith—sat down, Lance started yammering away about his stuffed cat, mispronouncing both of their names; which, apparently, did not sit well with Keith.

The new kid hates him because of that, Lance thinks. Or maybe because he got a little too loud on that first day (or any other day, really, he just can't keep his voice down when his potential new best friend is sitting less than a foot away from him). He doesn't know, but his only consolation is that he treats the other kids the same way he treats him—that is, keeping them all at a less-than-normal distance when they played outside or ate recess and refusing to talk to them unless he absolutely _has_ to—which meant he hated all of them. At least, at the very least, he wasn't on his own this time. It was 19 of them against one kid.

Or, really, 18 of them against Keith; Keith versus Lance was an entirely different thing altogether.

Keith versus Lance is shouting matches over the last lego, over running into each other, over anything that required contact between the two of them. Keith versus Lance is Keith shutting himself in every time Lance tries to talk to him, and Lance never giving up on him because he _knows_ , he _feels_ that Keith could be his new best friend and is very adamant on making it a reality (and no, it isn't because he and his stuffed cat had the same name). Keith versus Lance is having to be seated separately, in tables across each other, because they got too loud, and Mr. Coran had to pull them apart before anyone gets the chance to hurt anyone, inadvertently or otherwise.

Keith versus Lance was volatile and miserable. Keith versus Lance earned them the ire of the entire class; Lance is only lucky Mr. Coran _adores_ him.

Lance sneaks a peek at Keith, sitting all alone at the picnic table by the sandbox, drawing something furiously with a red crayon. He doesn't think it's right, that the two outcasts of the class should be up against each other all the time. Keith doesn't know it yet, but he has heard the other kids calling him a weirdo because his hair is crazy and his voice is too quiet and he gets too angry too quickly and his eyes are too small. He wants to tell him that he's seen that way and that he knows how it feels because that's what they do to him too, but Keith... Keith just doesn't want to listen to him sometimes. Right now, he has this deep frown on his face, and he knows; from experience, that that is not the face of someone who wants to talk.

It all makes him feel alone. On a Friday. Lance hates being sad on Fridays (Fridays were always happy in his house and he didn't want to worry anyone), so, in the spirit of bravery and great need; he dashes inside, to his cubbyhole, and takes Keef out to play.

The moment his fingers sink through the dense mass of red fur, Lance smiles; all his sorrows dissipating into thin air from just one touch. He holds Keef tightly in his arms, nuzzling his face into his head because that's what he always does when something makes him sad. He holds him, just standing there until he doesn't want to run home or cry or go back to Cuba—but he doesn't get there. The classroom door slams open, and in the doorway stands the big burly kids who always steal his food, his pencils, anything that looks relatively interesting to them that always seems to be in his hands.

He doesn't have enough time to stuff Keef back into his backpack, so he hides it behind him instead. The biggest one of them all—they call him Zarky, but he knows that isn't his real name—covers the distance between them in what feels like three seconds flat. He hovers over Lance, sneering at him menacingly.

"Watchu got there, _muchacho_?"

Lance's lip is quivering. "Not—nothing."

"Doesn't look like nothing to me," To Lance's horror, Zarky yanks Keef out of his hands even before he can tighten his grip on him. He examines the toy closely; Lance wants nothing else but to get his hands off Keef. "Oh, it's a stuffed kitty!"

Lance lunges at him, all fear be damned. No one, not even his youngest brother (who was 2), could touch Keef unless he let them. "Give it back!"

"I don't think so!" the bigger kid taunts, holding it up above his head. "I think kitty wants to go home with me!"

"No! He's mine!"

Zarky tosses Keef to his other friends; yanking Lance back by the arm when he tries to follow. He yelps in pain; tears springing into his eyes at the sight of Keef being harshly stuffed into Zarky's gross backpack, at the sight of losing the _one_ thing that made kindergarten bearable. He's alone, Keith doesn't like him, now Keef is gone too, and Lance just wants to go _home_ and never come back to this awful place—

The door swings open once again, and this time, it's Mr. Coran.

And Keith, the kid Keith, who is tugging insistently at Mr. Coran's jacket and pointing at the ruckus.

"What is going on here?" Mr. Coran asks, his orange brows tugging together in a frown. Zarky drops Lance's arm almost immediately; the two other kids let go of Keef's leg (now dangling loosely from the backpack), and even Lance himself starts to tremble in fear. Mr. Coran rarely ever gets angry due to his limitless patience, but the whole class knows that as soon as the smile and the friendly note to his voice disappears, he is well on his way to getting mad.

And nothing ticks him off more than fights—the serious kind, not the daily Keith versus Lance kind—wherein one kid is disadvantaged and/or hurt.

(Lance thinks he never really liked the big kids, anyway.)

Zarky swallows. "Not—nothing, Mr. Coran, we were just playing wi—"

"This does not look like nothing to me," Mr. Coran crosses his arms. "Sendak, give the toy back to Lance now. _Now_ , Sendak, I want to see you do it."

Lance does not miss the way Sendak's hands tremble when he hands Keef over, barely able to meet his eyes.

Mr. Coran nods. "Good. You three are on a time-out with me. Lance and Keith, go back outside. Come along, children, I will not stand for any more of this."

He herds them out the classroom doors, trailing them closely. Lance clutches Keef as tightly as he can, willing the tears away—as relieved as he is, he knows he only got lucky Mr. Coran got there in time, and he knows he's going to suffer the brunt of the big kids' time-out sooner or later. He still feels scared and alone and he wants to move back to Cuba now, because that's really where he belongs, right? Keef can only do so much. The secret is out now, too, and he can't bring Keef to school anymore because the big kids will get him eventually. He can't fight them. They'll get him, and he won't be able to take him back.

"Are you okay?"

Lance lifts his eyes from Keef's fur to see Keith watching him with those pretty eyes of his, sounding genuinely worried. His hand hangs in the space between them, like he wanted to pat Lance's arm.

He doesn't think too much about it. He sniffles. "Yes. Thank—thank you. For—for getting Mr. Coran."

"You're—um—you're welcome," Keith actually looks shy, and Lance notes that he can't roll his r's like he can. It’s amusing. "You were in trouble and I know I—I can't—can't fight them, so I ran to get Mr. Cor—Coran. I knew he could help you!"

"Why did you help me?" Lance tilts his head, studying Keith's face. Keith seemed like the last person to come to his aid. "I thought—I thought you hated me?"

His brow furrows. "I thought we were friends?"

"We are?" Lance stares at him, bug-eyed. Keith didn't hate him? Were the fights really just his way of showing his affection? Was he shy? He has a plethora of questions cropping up at the speed of light in his head, but he learned Keith gets overwhelmed, so he tries his best to reel himself in. Excitement jolts through his little body, a grin breaks over his face, the tears finally stop coming—a friend. Keith was a _friend_ all this time!

Keith looks hesitant, looks like he's waiting for Lance to say no. "Don't—don't you wanna?"

He can't have that. Lance takes Keith's hand, the one that was between them just a few moments ago, and gives it a good shake. Slowly, Keith begins to mirror his own grin.

"I wanna. We're friends. We had a bonding moment!"

**Author's Note:**

> on an unrelated note, ya'll can come say hi (or, for shiro stans, scream with me over a certain beefy beautiful black paladin) on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/Iakambini)


End file.
